Domainer

It's all about domain names

DIWG Meeting Thursday

by Leave a Comment

diwg domain investor working group prp auda kaay

 

The DIWG (Domain Investor Working Group) is meeting for the first time this Thursday in Melbourne where we will be reviewing the draft Direct .AU Registration implementation policy, currently being created by the PRP (Policy Review Panel), and providing feedback in relation to it, before it’s released to the general public.

The DIWG consists of the following members:

More information about the DIWG can be found in this press release.

In that press release, I stated:

“Direct .AU Registration has been the most polarising issue facing the domainer and domain investor communities since it was publicly approved to go ahead by auDA on the 18th April, 2016,” said Mr Kaay. “In forming the new Domain Investor Working Group, I believe we have a very strong group of 8 members who have been specifically chosen for their extensive experience as well-known and respected professional domain investors. We look forward to providing our collective feedback to the Policy Review Panel on their Direct Registration implementation policy, before it’s released to the broader public for feedback.”

I will be concentrating my efforts on the DIWG throughout September and October, but still hope to publish a number of Domainer Shows with Ed during this time.

 

auDA Constitution EGM & Webinar

by Leave a Comment

auda sgm july 2018 leptos boardman

 

 

 

 

auDA invites you to an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) of auDA Members:

Thursday 27 September, 10am
The Grape Room, Mercure Melbourne Treasury Gardens
13 Spring Street, Melbourne VIC 3000

At this meeting, members will be asked to approve a new constitution that gives effect to a number of the 29 recommendations in the Department of Communications and the Arts review of the .au Domain Administration.

auDA ask that you please take the time to carefully read the following documents ahead of the meeting on 27 September:

https://www.auda.org.au/news/notice-of-extraordinary-general-meeting-27-september-2018/

auDA are looking for public comments on various documents related to the Government Review. The documents include the new Proposed auDA Constitution and the the Proposed Nomination Committer Charter.

These documents can be found here: https://www.auda.org.au/public-comment/

auDA believe it’s crucial auDA members get the information they need on these changes so they’re holding an online Q&A about the proposed auDA constitution.

auDA Chair Chris Leptos, auDA CEO Cameron Boardman and representatives from Ashurst will answer member and stakeholder questions about the constitution via a Zoom webinar.

auDA Constitution Q&A

Thursday 13 September, 4pm-6pm AEST
Register for the webinar

DIWG (Domain Investor Working Group) Formed

by 6 Comments

diwg domain investor working group prp auda kaay

 

As mentioned on the auDA website last Friday, I am convening a new Domain Investor Working Group whose purpose is to receive the draft Direct .AU Registration implementation policy, currently being created by the PRP (Policy Review Panel), and provide feedback in relation to it, before it’s released to the general public.

auDA has released the following press release:

The Chair of auDA’s Policy Review Panel, Mr John Swinson, today welcomed the formation of focus groups that will assist auDA’s Policy Review Panel to finalise its recommendations regarding the policy for the implementation of direct registration in Australia.

Direct registration is registration of domain names directly before the dot au, for example, yourexample.au. At present in Australia, there is only one domain name registered at the second level, being csiro.au. The auDA board has tasked the Policy Review Panel to make recommendations on an implementation model to open up direct registration of domain names at the second level to all Australians.

“The Panel desires input and feedback from as many Australians as possible, particularly those who believe they will be affected by the implementation of direct registration,” said Mr Swinson. “The purpose of the focus groups is to gain specific feedback in relation to the draft direct registration implementation policy, before the proposed model is released for broader public feedback.”

The Panel wants this to be a real and meaningful consultation process. A professional facilitator will run the focus groups and will report back to the Panel.

It is intended that 3 to 4 focus groups will be established.

The first focus group will commence in September 2018 and will be convened by Robert Kaay and will seek consultation from domain name investors.

“Direct .AU Registration has been the most polarising issue facing the domainer and domain investor communities since it was publicly approved to go ahead by auDA on the 18th April, 2016,” said Mr Kaay. “In forming the new Domain Investor Working Group, I believe we have a very strong group of 8 members who have been specifically chosen for their extensive experience as well-known and respected professional domain investors. We look forward to providing our collective feedback to the Policy Review Panel on their Direct Registration implementation policy, before it’s released to the broader public for feedback.”

The other focus groups will be established shortly, with reports due by the end of October. These focus groups will include registrars, business owners and digital business groups.

The release date of the DIWG’s first in-person meeting, and its member list of 8 well-known and respected professional domain investors will be released soon.

CMWG Membership Model Webinar No 3

by 6 Comments

cmwg auda 2018 domain names .com.au

 

The Consultation Model Working Group released the following statement today:

Dear auDA members,

We are writing to you on behalf of auDA’s Consultation Model Working Group (CMWG) to let you know about an upcoming chance to have your say in the future of auDA. The CMWG is comprised of auDA members and stakeholders from the Australian internet community who were convened in May to define and oversee the process of consultation with the auDA membership and wider Australian community.

As you are no doubt aware, in March the Department of Communications and Arts handed down a review of auDA, which included 29 recommendations and a new set of Terms of Endorsement to be implemented within 24 months.

The review found auDA’s current membership model does not fully reflect Australia’s internet community and was contributing to ongoing organisational instability.

auDA welcomed the Federal Government’s review and has spent the past months, in consultation with the CMWG and with legal advice from Ashurst, developing a new membership and governance model that will not only meet government’s demands but also satisfy the expectations of existing members.

A new refreshed membership model and the required changes to the constitution will be put to members at the upcoming General Meeting on September 27th.

We are now at a point, where we’d like to present a draft model that we believe improves stakeholder engagement and delivers organisational stability. Consultation on what this model should look like is not over – we’re keen to hear what members think and how we can build on this draft.

We will soon make this draft model available for consideration, and we’d invite you to join an online forum where CEO Cameron Boardman, Chairman Chris Leptos, barrister Tony Lang and law firm Ashurst, will be available to answer your questions about the model and hear your ideas on what you want from auDA.

SAVE THE DATE: Wednesday, 29 August 2018 4pm to 7pm AEST

Register for the webinar here

Given the realities of the review’s timeframe we are operating on a very tight deadline. We apologise for the short notice of the meeting. We encourage you to participate so that you can understand why auDA is changing, how it might impact you and to help shape the future direction of auDA.

We also take this opportunity to let you know that we have a dedicated forum for consultation with the CMWG – cmwg.com.au.

We look forward to hearing from you.

.au Registry Migration Aftermath

by

.au migration afilias

The first day seeing Afilias as the new .AU Registry Operator is here.

We are LIVE.

Afilias has released the following statement, most notably stating:

The new system for .au went live on Sunday, July 1, 2018, ahead of schedule and as planned. The transition involved moving the records of over 3.1M domains from the legacy system to the new system within just a few hours.

First, the legacy provider closed the registry to new transactions on Saturday morning. Then the full registry dataset was extracted, encrypted, and sent to auDA, who sent it to Afilias Australia. Afilias verified the integrity of the data, transformed it into standards-based formats, loaded it into our new, dedicated Australian systems, and conducted a comprehensive set of tests to ensure a clean system.

The new registry opened for registrars early on the morning of July 1.

And auDA have been very quick to declare that everything has happened extremely smoothly, releasing their own statement on the auDA website, plus a seperate email statement (different from the website blog) that reads as follows:

The .au name space was transformed overnight with the seamless transmission of 3.1 million domain names to a new registry and national domain name infrastructure.

.au Domain Administration Ltd CEO, Cameron Boardman, said the transition of the registry to Afilias Australia was a milestone in the development of Australia’s digital economy.

The transition was completed on Sunday July 1, 2018, after six months of exhaustive planning and testing by auDA and Afilias working with the registrars who provide .au names to the public.

This followed a comprehensive expression of interest and tender conducted in 2017 to identify the registry operator of the .au namespace for the next 4 years from 1 July, 2018.

With the .au name space being an essential piece of national digital infrastructure, the new registry operator will help ensure the operational stability, security and integrity of the internet in Australia.

For .au users the new infrastructure will see a national network of DNS nodes across the country which will see faster response times, increased resilience and increased security.

As part of the new registry and tender process:

  • .com.au, net.au, org.au, id.au, asn.au, edu.au, and gov.au names will be able to be registered for between one and five years;
  • A new $12 million marketing and innovation program over 4 years to increase the awareness and use of .au; and,
  • A 10 percent reduction in wholesale fees for .au names.

“The .au name space is essential national infrastructure. It forms the backbone of the digital economy”, Mr Boardman said.

“The new registry will strengthen the operation and security of the .au name space so users can have confidence in the integrity and availability of .au domains.”

The adoption and use of digital technologies could contribute between $140 billion and $250 billion to Australia’s GDP by 2025, according to a September 2017 federal government report.

“The .au name space will play an integral part in this growth.”

“auDA is now positioned to help spur this economic growth with a network and registry provided by Afilias that will give the support continued expansion of the digital economy.”

There’s no doubt that auDA have put a lot of time and effort into this transition. And at first-look, Afilias certainly haven’t made any major blunders…

Over the coming week, I’m sure we will all come to the conclusion that this was a genius move by auDA, choosing an alternate company to handle the .AU Domain Name system, after AusRegistry performed a great service for 26 years… or, perhaps it was a bad move?

The next week will tell all.

Until we know for sure, some users are noting the WHOIS service is not currently working, and neither are expiry dates.

Plus, we still don’t know when and where the daily .AU domain name dropping service is going to be working and fully functional? Some people are claiming July 15th?

Afilias’ Official Domain Name Drop List doesn’t currently work…

I’m sure if domainers are experiencing problems, they’ll voice their opinions below.

The Big Registry Changeover on July 1st

by

afilias .au migration

As many of us know, the massive Australian Domain Name Registry database will switch over on June 30.

That’s only two weeks from now!

By all reports, this is the BIGGEST EVER domain name migration to a new Registry Operator in history.

Afilias were responsible for migrating the .ORG TLD database back in 2002. At that time there were just over 2 million domain names they had to move.

On June 3o, Afilias are going to migrate 3.1 million Australian domain names.

There’s no denying that’s a massive task!

For the last few months, according to Afilias’ blog, they have been performing the following actions:

April-May-June 2018: New DNS “nodes” are being installed all over Australia.  We’ll be lighting up servers in Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, Perth, Darwin and other great Australian cities.  These local servers will provide faster access to websites, improving the internet experience for all Australians, not just the folks in the big cities.

This is the first time Perth, Adelaide and Darwin have had “local” nodes, so you’d think we’d see some good speed advantages in these areas?

Bearing all that in mind, a lot of people are starting to ask, how smoothly and quickly is this all going to go?

Afilias have officially stated that Australian internet users won’t notice a thing, and it will appear as a non-event to everyone:

June 30, 2018: While this is the big “transition day,” internet users in Australia won’t notice a thing.  Afilias has managed many such transitions, so no one needs to worry about whether sites will still work—this will be a non-event.

Second, auDA again hosted another very successful meeting with our Australian registrar partners last week.  Afilias provided a detailed technical update and answered all the various questions that came up about the progress of the transition.  Australian registrars are quite sophisticated and dedicated to protecting their customers, and Afilias was recognized for its openness and collaborative spirit as we upgrade the .au technology together.

Will things be business-as-usual on July 1st?

What’s going to happen to the daily drops during this time?

From July 1st, will we be able to register dropped-domains for a one year period? For a five-year period?

You can read Afilias’ latest blog post about this “historic transition of .AU“.

 

© 2018 Domainer.com.au

Privacy Policy

Before making or reading comments on this site you must read our Disclaimer